50 Greatest Horror Movies Of The 21st Century

Plot: A grieving, depressed mother (Essie Davis) and her troubled son (Noah Wiseman) are haunted by a strange monster known as the Babadook.

Some found The Babadook to be a disappointment, as the film had received many ecstatic reviews during its festival run, and that set expectations which the film (inevitably) couldn't quite reach for some viewers.

Was the pre-release hype overblown? Sure, a little, but it's still completely great, and back in 2014 a horror film as good as The Babadook was something of a rarity, so you can't exactly blame reviewers for getting excited when they saw this.

After all, The Babadook manages to be a superbly-directed and psychologically horrifying supernatural thriller while also making for a genuinely affecting study of grief and depression, headlined by an Oscar-worthy performance from Essie Davis. It's exactly what you want horror films to be, and it was easily the genre's best offering from 2014.